


Space Flu

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Marvel, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Daddy Issues, Fluff, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 03:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3312596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his team gets back from SWORD, Pietro comes down with something nasty. When he gets home, his boyfriend isn't present, but his father is still there to force him to get some bedrest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Space Flu

Everything hurts _so_ much.

It had been a lot of effort running from headquarters back home – the team had just got back from a SWORD facility, and while at the best of times Pietro isn't fond of being surrounded by aliens, this time had affected him weirdly.

He pushes his apartment door open, tripping over the step before throwing it shut behind him. He wants to sleep, needs to sit down and not be moving – moving is too hard, and he feels weird, dizzy and hot and on edge in a way he's unfamiliar with.

And someone is in his _apartment._

Pietro stumbles as he makes his way forwards, and he drops against the other man's chest, heaving in a gasp and choking on his cough. He splutters against his father's shirt, and ordinarily he'd be _mortified_ , and would be across the room and apologizing repeatedly by now, but Pietro is _dizzy_ , and moving that far isn't exactly an option.

“Pietro?” His father's voice is low and quiet, _concerned_ , and Pietro looks at him blearily; without warning, his knees give way under his weight; his father's hands catch him, and Pietro registers it helplessly when the elder man carries him to the couch and sets him down.

“I- drugs, Father, I- must've been-” He's really struggling to focus on the other man's face, on the stupid _hat_ he's wearing, and he hasn't drank anything in hours and hours, so who could have drugged him? How did it get into his system?

“It's not drugs, Pietro.” His father says, and his hand touches Pietro's forehead, and it is so, _so_ cold, and Pietro presses into it – he's not used to feeling overheated, not used to it at all, and the heat compacts on his lungs, makes it difficult for him to draw in breath. “You've got a temperature.”

“No, no, don't get sick, my natural temperature is- 'cause speed, it's higher-”

“I know damn well what your natural temperature is, boy, and you're _sick._ ” His father says sharply, and Pietro shakes his head weakly, and that was a mistake, because moving his head made everything start to _spin._

“Ah- ah, ow-” Pietro doesn't understand. He does not _understand_. Something cloys in his throat, and he gasps, choking a little on his throat – his father reconstitutes the metal leg of Pietro's coffee table into a bowl fast enough that when Pietro vomits it spatters against the cheap alloy instead of onto his _expensive_ carpet. Pietro's coffee table looks so sad with one corner against the fabric on the floor.

He flops back like a rag doll on the sofa, and he stares at his father's furrowed brow, pressed-together lips, slight squint with bleary eyes.

“Vater, was- warum- wo ist- Vater-”

“Hush, hush, my child, come, come here-” His father's hands touch his shoulders, and then he lifts Pietro as if Pietro weighs absolutely nothing at all – the man always was stronger than he _looked_. Pietro's eyelids are closing of his own accord, and his head _hurts_ , his stomach is churning, and he feels like he might burn so much he'll turn to ashes and drop through the other's fingers as some fine dust.

Pietro does not struggle as the other man unbuttons his shirt and drops it aside, and he lets his father set him down on the bed because he cannot think of _moving._ “I don't understand.” Pietro whispers softly, and his father touches his cheek in a soft, affectionate fashion Pietro's only ever seen him demonstrate with Wanda and Lorna.

Erik Lehnsherr's fingers are a welcome coolness against his skin.

\---

When Pietro wakes, he sits up, and it hurts to do so – everything hurts, everything is spinning, and he's- he can't still be drugged, he must have _digested_ it by now-

“McCoy says you've contracted a virus.” Pietro stares at his father, who is sat beside his bed in an armchair he'd dragged in from Pietro's living room. “It's mutable, and has apparently managed to get its way into your immune system.”

“Do I have a fever?” Pietro is taken aback by how weakly his words come from his own mouth. “How long was I asleep? Wh-”

His father interrupts him by pressing the lip of a water bottle against his mouth, and Pietro drinks obediently despite himself.

“The temperature you have is unhealthy, yes. You were asleep for about nine hours.” Pietro stares at him. “You usually only sleep for two?”

“Mmm.” It unnerves Pietro when his father knows things about him. It unnerves him _completely_. His father takes a cooled over flannel and puts it over Pietro's forehead, to which the speedster lets out a soft cry of sound. It's significantly relieving. “D'you know where Clint is?” His own voice sounds so _needy_ , but his father makes no sharp quip about Pietro's boyfriend.

“He and Natasha are in Russia. They're not available for contact, I'm afraid.” comes the response, and he sounds almost sympathetic, quietly so. He leans, then, and Pietro lets him press a small piece of buttered bread into his mouth, but it takes only a few seconds before he chokes and spits it out.

The new bucket returns. Pietro's coffee table is ruined.

“Why are you here?” Pietro manages to ask when Erik sets it aside again, and his own words grate in his throat, but there's nothing else for him to throw up.

“It doesn't matter, child; I'm staying until you're well again.” His father says, and Pietro can't quite comprehend it when his cold fingers touch Pietro's own, and when his hand grasps at his son's.

“But- but I'm not-” His tongue stops working, and he can't really speak: Pietro is not Wanda. Pietro is not Lorna. Pietro is not Anya.

“You are my son.” is the response to Pietro's utterly silent repetition of facts and reasonings that his father does not love him, and the bottle of water is pressed against his mouth again. “You've never been sick before, have you?”

“M'power came in. Was nine. No more after.” His brow furrows; what he said didn't make complete sense, and now he's trying to think, trying to work out how to speak, but his father clucks his tongue and hushes him softly. His hand remains in Pietro's, but Pietro registers the pages of a book. His ears feel full of- _something._

“ _Squire Trelawney,”_ His father says, and Pietro feels some sort of sweet and all-encompassing relief that he's not reading Pietro Tolkien, like he used to to Wanda. He has the books to hand, but they're for his sister, his daughter; not for himself. “ _Dr Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back about the bearings of the island...”_ Pietro lets his eyes close, and he listens to his father read.

He is in and out. He zones out, when his father's hand is slowly stroking through his hair and he's half way through chapter one. He comes to at chapter four, and his father makes him eat bread soaked stew that he manages to swallow and keep down, this time. In, and out, in, and out.

The pirates are singing when Pietro opens his bleary eyes – how long has he been in bed? - and sees his father has a bruise blossoming against his temple.

“Father?” He points, tries to touch, but he catches Pietro's wrist and gently sets his hand down.

“Just a fever dream, my child, don't worry.”

“Fev- you mean, I? Father, Vater, nein-”

“Shush, hush, hush-”

Pietro dimly remembers, pounding and crying at the man that cannot possibly be his father, because his father doesn't love him and would not linger at his bedside simply because he's ill. He feels a flush of humiliation and shame, but his father's fingers touch his hair again, and Pietro lets out a quiet sob as he leans into it.

Four days, Clint confirms for him once he's home, when Pietro can just sit in the kitchen with his quilt wrapped around his body, and Clint is cooking for Pietro's father and trying to pretend he isn't scared shitless of the man. Four days his father has been looking after him, supporting him to the bathroom, putting cold flannels on his head and forcing water down his throat.

“Just a cold, really.” Erik mutters, touching Pietro's back as he walks past him, and effortlessly setting a knife to cut the onions on the counter beside Clint. “Obnoxious little dramatist.”

“You're a dramatist.” Pietro manages to croak out softly, and Clint laughs a little; Pietro sees his father's soft, fond smile in the reflection of the window. “You're the one that slept by my bedside like a Labrador.”

“This old dog would _beat_ you for that comment if you were well.” is his father's retort, and Pietro lets out a weak little laugh. It's still awkward, really, and he knows that when he manages to stand, when this damn virus is out of his system, he and his father will return to their usual stony distance, of awkward not-quite-family not-quite-not interactions.

Is it bad that Pietro wants so desperately to bask in the attention this space flu is getting him now? Perhaps. He feels worse than he has in years, but his father is here, Clint is here, and it's- okay. It's okay.

“What're you smiling about?” Clint asks with quirked lips as he turns back from the soup he has on the hob.

“Your ass.” Pietro says.

“ _Stop it_.” comes the sharp and fatherly order, and Pietro smiles, leaning into Clint's hand when it cups his chin, though he doesn't let Clint try to kiss him – just in case. “You can do that when I'm gone.”

“Yes, _sir_.” Pietro says, and Clint manages a mocking salute, though Pietro notices the way his other hand shakes a little at being cheeky to a man like Erik Lehnsherr.

It's more than okay, he supposes. For being ill, it's pretty damn good. 


End file.
